New Zealand Architecture in the 1870S Date
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"Colonisation .... in top gear": New Zealand architecture in the 1870s Date: Friday 7th December 2018 Venue: School of Architecture, Victoria University, Wellington Convener: Christine McCarthy (christine.mccarthy@vuw.ac.nz) The decade opened with the departure of British imperial troops from our shores, in anticipation of the end of the Land Wars. This coincided with Julius Vogel's bold plans for New Zealand public infrastructure supporting roads, railways and immigration, requiring overseas borrowing of £10 million. Part of Vogel's motivation included the idea that employment for M āori would create peace between Māori and P ākeh ā. The idea of peace - or "defusing anger from the wars" as Smith puts it - had also underpinned the establishment of the M āori parliamentary seats in the previous decade. She also writes that: Colonial politicians made the male M āori vote conditional on no "treason felony or infamous offence," so that "rebels" in the wars would be denied political citizenship. Donald McLean suggested the idea of four M āori seats as a temporary measure, effectively until M āori were assimilated and tribal land was converted into individual title, whereupon M āori men could exercise the same property vote as settlers. The Māori seats were extended for another five years in 1872, and made permanent in 1876 "amid fears that a flood of Maori voters on the European rolls would affect the chances Europeans in those seats." 1872 also saw two M āori members of Parliament being appointed to the Legislative Council or upper house, and the establishment of a Native Affairs Committee. This year is also considered to mark the end of the New Zealand Wars, when Te Kooti "took refuge ... in the King Country, becoming the colony's most wanted outlaw." Smith attributes this end date to Te Arawa forces firing "the last shots in the New Zealand wars, against a retreating Te Kooti." Brown identifies two strands of M āori architecture following the land wars: the appropriation of Christian and Western ideas and materials, which she sees in Te Whiti and Tohu's architecture at Parihaka, and Te Kooti's development of the work of East Coast tohunga whakairo, such as Raharuhi Rukupo. She writes that Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki "led the architectural development of the M āori meeting house, during and after the New Zealand Wars, to support his wider struggle for political justice and spiritual salvation. He had been one of Rukupo's carving apprentices, and may have worked on Te Hau-ki-Turanga." His "guerrilla-style resistance campaign against the colonial government" is associated with the building of Ringatu meeting houses, "over 40 of which were built between 1869 and 1908." An example, Brown gives, is Te Kooti's arrival in the Urewera in 1870, which was acknowledged with the building of Te Whai-a-te-motu at Ruatahuna, opened by Te Kooti in 1891. Neich appears to give qualified agreement to these assertions, both referring to Mead's suggestion that wharenui emerged "during the 1870s and 1880s, as a result of Ringatu inspiration which fused the large church of the missionaries and the indigenous carved house of the Maori into one architectural form." His work is focussed on Ngati Tarawhai and he states of the 1870s that: This was the period when the wars were coming to a close, a period of intense political and religious activity and realignment. The new large meeting houses were built to accommodate meetings discussing land and land sales, political meetings, tribal committees of all sorts, religious meetings, and to provide sleeping accommodation for the guests who travelled to these meetings. The carved and decorated house simply known as Whare Manuhiri, built at Te Taheke in the 1860s by Ngati Hinerangi as an accommodation house for visitors, including travelling Europeans, was probably an important development in the evolution of the modern meeting house in the Rotorua area. Thus the new meeting house incorporated the functions of the chief's house, the guest house and the church under one roof. Then the role of the meeting house as a venue for religious meetings, replacing the separate church, became prominent in the 1870s and 1880s. Smith notes, at this stage "[b]attles then transferred to the Native Land Court which after 1873 demanded even more intense individualisation of land interests." This was not straightforward, and government surveying of land in Taranaki in 1878 initiated another land dispute, with local M āori famously responding by ploughing the land in May 1879, after promised reserves for M āori occupation were not created. Brown describes the Parihaka community passively resisting "by removing survey pegs, ploughing settler fields, and rebuilding boundary fences torn down by surveyors." Ploughmen were arrested in June and July 1879 with some sentenced to Dunedin gaol. The Maori Prisoners' Trial Act 1879 was passed enabling the government to hold protesters without a trial. The Maori Prisoners Act 1880 further enabled the continuing detention of prisoners without a trial. The result was the creation of "the largest M āori conmmnity in Aotearoa New Zealand at that time," when "[a]n influx of Māori sympathetic to the protests came from around the central North Island" to Parihaka. The extension of the M āori seats were only one of a number of changes to New Zealand's government. The decade began with the introduction of the secret ballot for elections, while its end (1879) saw universal suffrage for P ākeh ā men, M āori men only being able to vote for the M āori seats - unless they held a £25 freehold estate or were a ratepayer. In the same year the parliamentary term shortened from five years to three, but perhaps the biggest change occurred in 1876, was when Provincial government ended with the abolition of the provinces and the creation of local government authorities. The architectural reality of this was that abolition "had landed most of [the provincial government] buildings in the Central Government's lap. Care and maintenance now became the concern of the Works Department." The new assertion of central government required buildings to accommodate it. Clayton was the first Colonial Architect (1869-1877). Shortly after his appointment, in 1871, he began preparing plans to extend the Wellington Provincial Buildings, in anticipation of the change to central government. Stacpoole writes that Clayton's Legislative Council Chamber "took its cue from the old building and adopted a form of Gothic detailing without showing any depth of feeling for the style," while Hodgson, clearly more enthused about the building, describes the result as "a wild Gothic storm with plenty of decoration and a singular skyline which endeared it to photographers." It burnt down in 1907. There was equally a need to house public servants. The 1876 9,290 sqm wooden Renaissance Revival Government Buildings on reclaimed land was designed by William Clayton. The choice of building material is usually credited to earthquake safety while criticised on ground of vulnerability to fire. In contrast to this, Martin states that Clayton: strongly favoured concrete, considering that resistance to fire took priority over resistance to earthquakes. The timber tender was only 75 per cent of that for concrete and the government over-ruled his preference on the grounds both of economy and speed of construction. Hodgson also notes Clayton's "insistence on using Australian jarrah, which not only meant delays but was also seen as a snub to local timber merchants." Stacpoole and Beaven describe the final building as retaining its dignity, while "the horizontal emphasis suggests a leisureliness and repose which have long since been lost to modern living." Stewart states its design was influenced by Queen Victoria's Osborne House. Stacpoole points out perhaps the greatest influence on Clayton's design when he writes that "[h]ere there were no unfortunate Gothic neighbours and he was able to give full play to his love of neo-Renaissance forms and details." The building initially housed "600 civil servants and was heated by 160 fireplaces," a phenomenon translated by Stacpoole as "a forest of chimneys sprouting from the roof. Their removal was an improvement." Martin notes that Clayton also built government offices "in Tauranga in 1875, in lnvercargill, Gisborne and Wellington in 1876, in Lyttelton in 1877 and in Christchurch in 1879;" Cathedral Square's new government buildings (William Clayton and Pierre Burrows, 1876-79) gave the square a building in an "uncommon" and "restrained" Venetian Gothic. Martin also documents the Customhouse in Russell (1870), Courthouses in Reefton (1872), Naseby (1875), Napier (1875), Rawene (1876), and Akaroa (1878), an extension to the Coromandel Courthouse, (1873), Post Offices in Havelock, Marlborough (1876), Port Chalmers (1877), and Lyttelton (1877), and the Industrial School Burnham (1873) as among Clayton's work, and claims that over the eight years of his role as Colonial Architect (he died in 1877), he had designed and saw to completion 180 buildings. This level of productivity might be credited to Clayton's development of ""standard plans" for small public buildings, which could better be described as standard approaches to design-timber construction, steep roofs with deeply overhanging gables, standard brackets and standard windows." Martin states that "Clayton's rapidly produced "standard plans" seem wholly original, carry little historical reference, and display no ornament. It was a formidable achievement." The need for such a plan is, in part, explained by the amount of work done by the Colonial Architect, but also by his lack of resources. Stacpoole described the Colonial Architect's office as a "meagre establishment," which he embellishes with the image of "long hours spent at night over a drawing board or preparing endless reports." Martin identifies the Customhouse in Russell and the Post Office in Havelock, Marlborough, as two existing examples of Clayton's standard plan work.